Opponents claim the new citizenship act could turn Nepal into Fiji

A day after the parliament enacted the new Citizenship Act, its opponents have claimed that the act would turn Nepal into Fiji.

"There is a possibility of Nepal turning into Fiji," said Narayan Man Bijukchhe, president of Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP) – a constituent of the ruling Seven Party Alliance who had voted against the citizenship bill at the parliament on Sunday.

Bijukchhe, talking to Nepal FM, said that the act was "incomplete" and would only help "to provide Nepali citizenship to agents of foreign multinational companies, thereby turning domestic capitalists into street vendors."

Likewise, lawyer Sadhya Bahadur Bhandari, a member of the Citizenship Abuse Resistance Campaign, has said that making "birth" instead of "descent" as the precondition for providing citizenship in a small country sandwiched between two populous countries could be suicidal.

"There are so many foreign immigrants in our country from refugees from Sri Lanka and Tibet to Iraq, Iran and Myanmar. Besides, there is a huge presence of nationals from our southern neighbor apart from 300,000 Bhutanese refugees. If, indeed, this citizenship act is implemented then our indigenous Terai people will become a minority in short time," Bhandari.

Bhandari also argued that the new act was not aimed at providing citizenship to genuine indigenous people of Terai. "If it had aimed so, why keep the provision of providing citizenship based on birth. Anyone can be born here," he said, adding that the political parties should rather have formed all party team and identified genuine Terai people with the help of local elders and then provide citizenship to them.

Bhandari added that Nepal was moving on the path of becoming another Fiji – where a few years ago the indigenous people were in a minority and a person of Indian origin got elected as president.

On the other hand, Terai-based parties like Nepal Sadbhavana Party (NSP-Anandidevi) have celebrated the new act. Rajendra Mahato, general secretary of the NSP-Anandidevi, said that with the new act four million Nepalis of Terai region would get the citizenship. "The parties had committed to give them their rights of citizenship before the elections to Constituent Assembly," he said.

Almost all political parties have voted in favor of the new act. The eight parties including the Maoists, on November 8 agreement, had agreed to pass the bill ensuring citizenship rights of Terai people. The agreement had stated, "Considering mid-April 1990 as the base (cut off) year, all Nepalese citizens who were born before that date and have been continuously living in Nepal since then will be provided with citizenship certificate." nepalnews.com sd Nov 27 06

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